1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing a surface emitting laser array, and more particularly, to a method for manufacturing the same in which polarization characteristics which constitute a laser array are controlled by alternately arranging the surface emitting laser formed by sloping a cavity in the &lt;110&gt; or &lt;110&gt; direction and etching the same in accordance with the row or the column direction of the surface emitting laser.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser has characteristic which the polarization is randomly presented as opposed to a edge-emitting laser. Therefore, if such polarization characteristics are controlled in a desired direction, not only the optical connecting efficiency for optical interconnection or optical switching can be improved, but also it is greatly effective when it is applied to a device, such as a magneto-optics disk which is sensitive to the polarization.
As an example of the conventional method for controlling the polarization, the two methods that one is to etch the cavity into an asymmetric-type section, the other is to form a fine pattern on the surface thereof have been reported. However, there are disadvantages that the former loses the circularity of the laser beam and the latter makes the manufacturing process complicated since a technique which requires the high degree of difficulty, such as an electron-beam lithography method. First of all, the highest problem is that even though the both two methods may derive the polarization in one direction, but it cannot apply the deflection characteristics of the two directions which are relatively perpendicular to each other to a single semiconductor chip when in manufacture.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method for manufacturing a surface-emitting laser array in which polarization characteristics of the a surface-emitting laser are controlled by alternately arranging the surface-emitting laser formed by sloping and etching a cavity in the &lt;110&gt; and &lt;110&gt; direction in accordance with the row or the column direction of the surface-emitting laser.
According to the present invention, since the surface-emitting laser array which has the polarization characteristics of the relatively perpendicular directions to each other and is manufactured by integrating it to a single semiconductor chip has a different polarization characteristics as compared to that the adjacent laser beams, the interaction therebetween can be minimized and the device may easily be applied to the device which is sensitive to the polarization characteristic. Further, the optical interconnection or optical switching can easily be performed.